


In Which Gabriel Lives In His Sea Of Lies

by caramelcoastal



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Angst, Grumpy Old Men, Jack the Reaper, Kissing, M/M, Reaper76 - Freeform, Role Reversal, Strike Commander Gabriel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 03:38:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8473951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caramelcoastal/pseuds/caramelcoastal
Summary: Gabriel couldn't call the shot to kill a monster. He couldn't stop reading those love letters over and over again. He couldn't move past the biggest mistake in his life. You don't really know what you have until it's gone, and Strike Commander Reyes knows this better than anyone else. Now, there's a man waiting for him on his balcony. And as afraid as he is, Gabriel has to approach them, in all of their toxicity.





	

**Author's Note:**

> superfluffywolf on tumblr requested "I was wondering if you were still doing your writing requests? If so I would love something of Jack (Overwatch) being the one to have reaper inside of him and Gabriel would be the Soldier. If not, that's okay, just figured I'd ask! Thank you for reading this, sweetie <3"
> 
> DUDE THIS TOOK ME LIKE THREE MONTHS TO GET TO I AM SO SORRY
> 
> EDIT: This is an old story. I'm really not proud of it. Read any of my newer stuff from this year, it's honestly much better and not super littered with purple prose and problematic nonsense.

“No. Don’t take the shot,” the Overwatch strike commander barked into the radio earpiece. He was always a grouchy bastard, but when it came to this particular Talon operative, he was especially prickly.  
“Commander, I have a perfect shot. After the damage he’s caused, don’t you think it would make it all easier? He’s a monster, we can’t even classify whatever the hell he is as human,” the sniper insisted. This was true; this man had caused the deaths of many. He was a wanted international terrorist, and the commander could be potentially saving millions by having him killed right now. It was selfish, and wrong, but he couldn’t bring himself to call the shot.

“I said no, dammit. You will not shoot him. Move back, and that is an order. Don’t disobey,” he snapped in his snake-like, blade-sharp tone.

“But… Sir, he’s getting close to base. What if he gets there, and hurts someone?”

“For fuck’s sake, do I need to spell it out for you? Put the damn rifle away, don’t take the shot.” 

There was silence. “Yes, Commander Reyes.” 

Commander Reyes. Now, that was a bittersweet name. 

A name he earned.

No.

Stole.

A name he stole. Commander was Jack’s title, originally. It belonged to him. But Gabriel wasn't a man to take no for an answer. He wasn't above using very personal information to get what he wanted. So, it wasn't a surprise when a government official ‘overheard' Gabriel talking to someone about a sexual relation Jack had with a seventeen year old girl undergoing training to join the force.  
Was it true? Well, the truth is very subjective. What's ‘true' to someone else may not be the whole ‘truth', but if it's convenient to the situation, then so be it. So what if it wasn't entirely the whole, entire honest-to-god, swear-on-the-bible, boy-scout-goody-two-shoes truth? It was a form of the truth. Right?

Wrong. 

It was the biggest bold-faced lie that Gabriel had ever told and he knew it. That’s really saying something, seeing how he wasn’t exactly the most honest man in the world. His pitchfork tongue spoke of lies day and night, it was just who he was. But out of all the un-true truths he told, this was the most pungent. It stank, and bled everywhere, making a mess of his whole life. Sloppy black ink pouring into the ruins that were once his happiness and drowning him like a rat.

Because, there was a time when he and Jack were lovers.

Up until Gabriel lied, they were actually engaged. On his left ring finger still sat the beautiful engagement ring, shining in the light of his desk lamp; scuffed, and scraped, and never leaving his hand. Jack was the only thing he could think about in mile long traffic jams. He came up every morning as he poured milk into his wheat cereal, or when he did his laundry. He went to bed, and on the tip of his brain sat Mr. Goody Two Shoes himself, the same blonde young man with the dashing smile and perfect life. His grip on the bed sheets would tighten, and he would cry. The crying would dissolve into sobbing, and then into screaming in his pillow. 

Screaming for the life he once led, that now only remained in faint dreams and fairy tales, because everything he cared about was gone. The grass is always greener on the other side, isn’t it? What you always wanted turned out to be the exact opposite of what you needed. Gabriel Reyes had become exactly what he despised: another cliche.

A young man knocked on the door loudly. “Commander Reyes?” A pit formed in his stomach, and his chest felt hollow.

Commander Reyes: what a pointless and painful name. Commander of a group of people that blamed him for what Jack had become. He had to look in the mirror every morning and know it was his fault that the love of his life was now a criminal that was supposed to be shot on sight. 

“Yes?” Gabriel sat up in his chair, and sighed. 

“He left another one,” The pit grew wider, and he shot up and raced to the door.

A red rose and a note. Signed by Jack Henry Morrison in beautiful black ink. The sniper wasn’t kidding when he’d said that he was close, this had just been delivered.

His two shaky hands reached over and took hold of the note, and he eyes quickly scanned the note up and down, devouring every last little detail there was. This was the third love letter, now. It looked like this was the routine he was taking. Gabriel held the note close to his chest and sighed deeply.

On the twenty third of every month, Jack managed to sneak him a piece of paper and rose oozing with love and gushy feelings. It was hard to believe the same man who wrote this had murdered many of his former colleagues and friends. Gabriel shut the door on the young man outside and read the note again.

“My love, the sun is high in the sky as I write this and it makes me want back the days where we would sit on your bunk together, just looking out the window. The room would be bathed in a golden glow as the day faded and was replaced with the night. It reminds me of us now. Because, you are the daylight bathing the earth in a warm glow. And I, I am the moon that pulls and pushes the ocean waves, in an attempt to drown anything I can. But, at sunset, we can finally touch. I am with you, Gabriel. Always with you. Forever yours, Jack Henry Morrison,” 

The ink became smudged and stained with his tears, and for a moment nothing around him mattered. He wanted his life back, he wanted to embrace his husband and melt into his arms, just let everything disappear around them. But that wasn’t going to happen that night, or ever again. 

Under Gabriel’s watchful gaze, Overwatch had only improved. The public relations had been repaired, and the uprising that Gabriel had been considering had totally left his mind. They thrived, everything just went exactly to plan. 

Too bad he and Jack’s marriage were nowhere in that plan.

Gently, he placed the note in the bedside stand with the others. They had become his nightly reading material, and he soaked up every detail in the tiny little notes. Jack’s affection had almost become something religious for Gabriel, and this was his holy text. The strike commander gulped down every word, drank every drop there was, as if it could ever be a good replacement for the real thing.

What his mother told him as a child was correct: in this life, nobody wins completely. Even the winners had to give something up. Was Gabriel a winner?

Well, he sure was wealthy. With the exception of Jack, and Ana who had been killed by that Amelie bitch, he still had all of his friends. People looked up to and respected him. He was Strike Commander Gabriel, with the long blue coat and eye-piece! This promotion, wasn’t it everything he wanted? He was willing to lie about his fiancee about it, it better have been.

He collapsed back into the bed, and thought for a moment, before an incessant tapping at the glass door to his balcony drew his attention. This wouldn’t be too concerning, if it wasn’t for one very tiny detail: he lived on the fourth floor of the base. As ashamed as he was to admit it, Gabriel was shaking a bit; his hand wouldn’t hold still or stop twitching.

Alright, then. It was probably just the wind, but there’s nothing wrong with taking a look. Shaking a bit, and ready with his gun, Gabriel approached the balcony. Someone sat outside, in a long black trenchcoat and white owl mask, with tight pants that clung to the legs. Okay, yeah, that was freaky. How did someone get all the way up there without him noticing? 

With great caution, he slid the door open. “Hey, how the hell did you get up here?” he asked, clutching his gun in hand like he was holding onto the edge of a cliff.

The man in the trenchcoat shifted a bit, and shrugged. “Mm, I’ve always had my ways. You know that, don’t you Gabriel?” growled a voice that sounded like it had spent a few days gargling glass. 

“Who the fuck are you?” He aimed right for the figure, just in case they tried anything.

“How could you forget me so soon, Gabi? I knew you never loved me, but I figured you would at least remember me a bit. After all, you sure spent a lot of time spreading lies about me.” Loved him? Gabi? Lies? A shiver ran up his spine, and all the hairs on his arms prickled.

“Jack?” Gabriel whispered, a tinge of sentimentality peeking through the skepticism.

“Don’t go by that anymore. It has just too many… Painful ties. You can call me Reaper if you’d like. Or don’t, I couldn’t care less what you called me anymore. I only have one thing to call you, Gabe,” he paused, before hissing, “a liar.”

Gabriel’s legs felt like they were going to give out underneath him. “Why did you come here? What could you want from me?”

Reaper rolled his head around on his neck, and yawned. With a crack of his knuckles, he pulled his mask off and revealed his face to his ex-fiancee, much to his horror. A long, black crack traveled from the left side of his mouth to his ear, and whenever he breathed- a process that seemed very laborious for him- black gaseous crap would leak from it. Skin was decaying on most of his grayed face. Both eyes were smoky and glassed-over, and he reeked like tar. Gabriel’s legs gave out underneath him, as he stared up at what was once the handsome, strong Jack Morrison, now a literal shadow of his former self. He’d known he had become a monster after Mercy worked on his destroyed body, but this? This was too much to handle.

“Take a real good, nice look at me, Gabriel. You want to know why this happened? A lot of people believed your bullshit story about me and that seventeen year old. So did her father, in fact. He and his buddies found me at a bar after I’d gotten fired, pulled me behind the alley, and dumped gasoline all over my body. You put together the rest.” He put the mask back on, hiding his abominable face..

Angela had told him it was just a car accident. Gabriel shook his head, slowly at first, but soon squeezed his eyes shut to fight back the tears that were threatening to start a flood.

“Open those pretty little Spanish eyes and meet me halfway, Gabriel. Isn’t that the least you could do? Look at me? At least give me that, man, come on.” Reaper just sounded so relaxed, like he was getting some sick satisfaction out of this. “I came today to just show you what I’d become. Put those guns down, Gabriel. You can’t even have someone else kill me, there’s no way you have the balls to do it yourself.” He mockingly patted Gabe’s shoulder.

“This wasn’t what I wanted, Jack. All I wanted was to be commander; I should have never hurt you in the process,” Gabriel cried, dropping the gun and burying his face away into a sleeve out of shame.

“Well, it’s a little too late for that, isn’t it? The liar got the happy ending, and I got murdered and shoved into this shameful display of a body,” he snarled. Rather roughly, Reaper grabbed Gabriel by his hair and forced him to make eye contact. He drank up every ounce of his ex-fiancee’s guilt, greedily desiring for more.

“Look at the sky, Gabriel. What time of day is it?” he growled.

Gabriel turned his head to face away from Reaper, and shut his eyes. The yellows and golds of the fading day were mixing beautifully with deep blues of an approaching night. It felt warm, but with a chilly breeze, as the sun threatened to dip down behind the horizon. 

“Because, you are the daylight bathing the earth in a warm glow. And I, I am the moon that pulls and pushes the ocean waves, in an attempt to drown anything I can...” He lifted his mask again, leaned forward, and planted a searing kiss on the sobbing man’s lips. It was a strangled, toxic, suffocating sign of affection. The taste of tar and rot filled Gabriel’s mouth, but he embraced it, opening his mouth to invite Jack’s love in to stay.

The sounds of wet smacking were all either of them could hear, and Gabriel’s tears dripped onto Jack’s face like a salty rain. At this moment, the heartbroken old man couldn’t think of any other place he would rather be. It was so sudden, sad, bitter, and painful, but as much as it hurt, Gabriel couldn’t bring himself to pull away. Jack’s oh-so familiar tree-branch arms wrapped their away around him in a cold embrace. This wasn’t healthy, and Gabriel knew it, but he didn’t care. Jack had to be the one to pull, with a tormenting smirk, while Gabriel reached out for him.

“... but at sunset, we can finally touch,” he whispered, leaning into his ear. Before Gabriel could desperately pull him into another hug, Jack seemed to be turning to smoke. Desperately, the commander swatted his hand through the black gas, trying to hold on to anything he could of his beloved, while Jack just laughed at his attempts.

“Today, really, I only came to fuck with your head. Next time won’t be so lucky, I’ll probably have to kill you. Don’t you wish it didn’t have to be this way? I know I do. Until then, Gabe.” In seconds, he was completely gone. 

Underneath his own weight, which felt heavier than normal, Gabriel buckled down to the floor and sobbed. The moon took her place in the sky, and stared down upon him. Sunset was over, and the lonely night had just begun. Jack poisoned him, and he wanted to beg for more.


End file.
